“Receding Terrain” — Layers of sandstone landscape lead toward a distant ridge, Arches National Park.
The first time I visited Arches National Park I went with virtually no prior knowledge of the place. I had read about it in Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire,” but I knew little more than that it is red rock country and a popular park. Such a lack of preparation could seem like a problem, but it also turned out to be a gift to myself. It is one thing to arrive at such a place knowing what to expect, but driving into the park and discovering its garden of towers and arches and fins was overwhelming. I had no idea!
“Mud Patterns” — Colorful patterns formed in dry and cracked mud, Capitol Reef.
Recently I went through my archives to see just how many photographs of dried mud I have made over the years. It is a lot! There are perhaps a few dozen finished photographs of this subject that I have shared publicly. But there are scores of them sitting in my unprocessed raw file archives. This one, in fact, is one that I “discovered” during this search, and I’m now sharing it for the first time.
“Cliff Face in Morning Light” — Warm early-morning sunlight intensifies colors and textures of a sandstone cliff, Arches National Park.
We had finished dawn photography of nearby formations on this October morning at Arches National Park. As I was working that subject I kept noticing this remarkable bit of cliff, also in the direct morning sunlight. The larger formation of which it is a part did not offer me any obvious photographic subject, so I switched to a long lens and zeroed in on the colors and textures of this small portion of the scene.
“Juniper Tree, Water-Stained Cliff” — A Juniper Tree, Water-Stained Cliff solitary juniper tree grows at the base of a water-stained sandstone cliff.
Several things about the scene caught my attention as we passed through this area in of Capitol Reef National Park. The background is one of the thickest and most monumental strata in this area of the park. The surface of this solid rock is, however, marked in all sorts of ways. Notably there are stains from flowing water, and in a couple of vertical bands the flow has been regard enough to encourage the growth of lichens.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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